WUSTL School of Arts and Sciences Newshttps://source.wustl.edu
Tue, 26 Sep 2017 19:00:54 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.2Subscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with PageflakesSubscribe with PlusmoSubscribe with The Free DictionarySubscribe with Bitty BrowserSubscribe with NewsAlloySubscribe with Live.comSubscribe with Excite MIXSubscribe with Attensa for OutlookSubscribe with WebwagSubscribe with Podcast ReadySubscribe with FlurrySubscribe with WikioSubscribe with Daily RotationGross wins national American Chemical Society awardhttps://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/gross-wins-national-american-chemical-society-award/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/gross-wins-national-american-chemical-society-award/#respondTue, 26 Sep 2017 19:00:54 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=230509Michael L. Gross, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named recipient of the 2018 American Chemical Society Award in Analytical Chemistry, sponsored by the Battelle Memorial Institute.

Michael L. Gross, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named recipient of the 2018 American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in Analytical Chemistry, sponsored by the Battelle Memorial Institute.

Gross, who is also professor of immunology and pathology and of medicine at the School of Medicine, will receive the award along with a $5,000 prize at the ACS awards ceremony March 20, held in conjunction with the 255th ACS national meeting in New Orleans. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the science of analytical chemistry, pure or applied, carried out in the United States or Canada.

“Michael Gross is a true pioneer in the fundamental science and methods development for mass spectrometry of biological molecules,” said William E. Buhro, chair of the Department of Chemistry and the George E. Pake Professor in Arts & Sciences. “His contributions range from the earliest efforts in peptide sequencing to studies of protein folding and unfolding on the microsecond timescale.

“Mike is one of the most productive and highly cited mass spectrometrists in history,” Buhro added. “The ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry is richly deserved, and we are extremely proud to have Mike as a longtime member of the Department of Chemistry.”

]]>https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/gross-wins-national-american-chemical-society-award/feed/0Which came first: big brains or demanding environments?https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/came-first-big-brains-demanding-environments/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/came-first-big-brains-demanding-environments/#respondMon, 25 Sep 2017 15:00:47 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=203959Researchers in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis are challenging the notion that environment drives the evolution of brain size. A new study was released Sept. 25 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

]]>Given how proud we are of our big brains, it’s ironic that we haven’t yet figured out why we have them. One idea, called the cognitive buffer hypothesis, is that the evolution of large brains is driven by the adaptive benefits of being able to mount quick, flexible behavioral responses to frequent or unexpected environmental change.

It is difficult to test this idea on people because there is only one living species in the genus Homo. Birds, according to Carlos Botero, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, are another matter. There are many species, they have a range of brain sizes and they live everywhere. In many ways, they are the ideal group for testing this hypothesis.

But, after a while, he began to think about alternative explanations for his results. The hypothesis requires that big brains improve survival, but Botero’s study didn’t show this. And it didn’t settle a crucial timing issue: Did large brains evolve in variable habitats, or did they evolve elsewhere and then make it easier to colonize harsh environments? However, the mockingbird study didn’t look back in time.

So together with Trevor Fristoe, postdoctoral associate in biology at Washington University and Canadian biologist Andrew Iwaniuk of the University of Lethbridge, Botero decided to tease out the assumptions behind the cognitive buffer hypothesis and test each of them separately.

Their study, published Sept. 25 in Nature Ecology and Evolution, showed that large brains weren’t more likely to evolve in variable compared to stable habitats, so that part of the hypothesis wasn’t supported. But it also showed that brainier birds were better able to colonize seasonal, unpredictable places. So birds with big brains were able to move into a broader range of environments.

“The findings were pretty surprising,” Fristoe said. “In the first part of the study, we showed that a big brain really does give birds a survival advantage in variable environments. So the mechanism works. But that made it all the more puzzling when the second part of the study showed that big brains often evolved in stable — not in variable — habitats.”

What does size have to do with it?

Botero is the first to acknowledge that brain size is an imperfect measure of cognition, a term that itself has many definitions.

Who’s a birdbrain?

Many birds have brains the size of walnuts, which has led our species to condescend to theirs and make jokes about their cognitive abilities. But recent research suggests the joke is on us.

Scientists who counted neurons in bird brains found that they are much more tightly packed than neurons in primate brains, containing on average twice as many neurons as primate brains of the same mass. So, in fact, a large-brained bird such as a parrot or raven has the intellectual firepower of a mid-size primate.

So much for bird brains.

What the scientists looked at was not absolute brain size, but the difference between brain size and the statistically predicted brain size for the bird’s body size. “An ostrich seems to have a huge brain, but relative to its body size, it’s really not that impressive,” Botero said. “A raven is not much larger than a chicken, but its brain is proportionally much more massive.

“The correlation between relative brain size and cognitive ability is better for birds than for mammals,” Botero said. “Although relative brain size is a noisy metric, it’s still one of the better ways we have to measure brain-related differences among species at large taxonomic scales.

“This whole field is fraught with caveats.”

Nailing down the first assumption

Botero and Fristoe first tested the assumption that a bigger brain gave birds a survival advantage by analyzing the data gathered by the Breeding Bird Survey, a huge database of bird sightings that is used to monitor populations of North American birds. Each year since 1966, volunteer birders have followed pre-established routes during peak breeding season, stopping for three minutes at designated points to count all the birds they can hear or see.

“We went through all the data for North America, all of the species for which we knew brain size, and came up with a metric for population stability, adjusting for other factors that can affect stability such as clutch size and whether or not the bird is migratory,” Botero said.

They characterized environmental conditions over the same period with data from ecoClimate, an open database of climatic simulations, and data from NASA Earth Observations.

Counter-example one: Ptarmigans

Talking to Carlos Botero keeps you on your toes because he’s always thinking of examples or counter-examples for his theories. Take ptarmigans.

“They have small brains, but they still live in places that are variable and harsh, like northern Alaska,” he said. “So maybe there’s more than one route to environmental resilience, and the ptarmigans evolved to be sturdy rather than smart.”

“We showed that species with big brains maintain stable populations in environments where the temperature, precipitation or productivity change a lot, and species with smaller brains cope less well,” Botero said.

“So the mechanism people were proposing really does seem to work,” he said. “Big brains do improve survival when environmental conditions change frequently and unexpectedly.”

Nailing down the second assumption

The scientists were now ready to tackle the main issue. “The cognitive buffer hypothesis asserts brains became bigger because species were being exposed to more variable environments,” Botero said. “It makes sense, but is it true?”

For the hypothesis to be true, the variable conditions had to happen first, and that meant the scientists had to devise some way to reconstruct the characteristics of birds and environments which vanished long ago.

Counter-example two: Parrots

“Think about parrots,” Carlos Botero said. “We have lots of parrots with big brains in the wet forests of the neotropics, which we think of as having extremely stable climates. They evolved those big brains without their lineages ever being exposed to variable hatitats.

“Maybe from the bird’s point of view, those environments are still variable, not climatically but in other ways,” he said. “For example, a lot of those species eat seeds or fruits that have high levels of toxic compounds, so to stay healthy they must vary their diet. That means they need to have a spatial and a temporal map of food availability.

“Could it be that ecological rather than climate variation drives brain evolution?”

To do this, they looked for evolutionary correlations between transitions in brain size and the temperature and precipitation variability of species-specific habitats in a global phylogeny of birds (a diagram that represents the order in which species are thought to have evolved from a common ancestor).

“We found that big brains are equally likely to evolve in places that had variable conditions and places that had stable conditions. We don’t see any difference between the two,” Botero said. (See sidebars for examples.)

“But we found that variable environments are more likely to be colonized by species that already had big brains,” he said. “That explains why, when we go out today, we find an association between big brains and variable environments. And probably why his earlier study found the best singers among mockingbirds lived in variable habitats.

So we now know a big brain helped species like the common raven to expand into the variety of habitats where they live today, but we still don’t know why ravens and even humans evolved big brains in the first place. Botero and Fristoe are thinking about it.

The research was supported by Washington University funding.

]]>https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/came-first-big-brains-demanding-environments/feed/0McLeod Writing Prize winners announcedhttps://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/mcleod-writing-prize-winners-announced/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/mcleod-writing-prize-winners-announced/#respondFri, 22 Sep 2017 18:59:26 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=231676This year’s winners of the Dean James E. McLeod Freshman Writing Prize have been recognized. They are are Gabriella Ruskay-Kidd and Ella-Marie West, and Luka Cai Minglu received an honorable mention. The prize awards students in Arts & Sciences who engage in research that explores an aspect of race, gender or identity.

]]>This year’s winners of the Dean James E. McLeod Freshman Writing Prize were recognized at a ceremony Sept. 18.

The prize was created to award students in Arts & Sciences who engage in research that explores some aspect of race, gender or identity.

The winners, who are now sophomores, are Gabriella Ruskay-Kidd and Ella-Marie West, both honored for their work in Sowande Mustakeem’s course, “African-American Women’s History: Sexuality, Violence & the Love of Hip Hop.” Luka Cai Minglu, an international student from Singapore, won an honorable mention for her work in Wolfram Schmidgen’s course, “What is Justice?”

]]>https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/mcleod-writing-prize-winners-announced/feed/0Inside the Hotchner Festival: Scott Greenberghttps://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/inside-hotchner-festival-scott-greenberg/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/inside-hotchner-festival-scott-greenberg/#commentsThu, 21 Sep 2017 18:51:24 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=231097In “Raindropped,” playwright Scott Greenberg, a senior in Arts & Sciences, explores the idea of falling from grace, both figuratively and literally. This weekend, “Raindropped” and two other student plays will receive their world premiere staged readings as part of Washington University in St. Louis' annual A.E. Hotchner New Play Festival.

]]>Elliot is the worst best man ever. He tries to fall out of love with the bride but falls out of an airplane instead.

In “Raindropped,” Scott Greenberg, a senior in Arts & Sciences, explores the idea of tumbling from grace, both figuratively and literally. This weekend, “Raindropped” will receive its world premiere staged reading at Washington University in St. Louis as part of the annual A.E. Hotchner New Play Festival.

In this Q&A, Greenberg discusses “Raindropped” and the playwriting process.

Greenberg (Photo: Jerry Naunheim Jr./Washington University)

You’re an acting major and recently landed your first professional role. What drew you to theater?

I’ve always been a writer, but acting captured my heart when I was cast as Rocky in a high school production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” I’d never acted, so starting with a raunchy musical was terrifying. But it also introduced me to a Scott I’d never met. It was otherworldly fun.

Tell us about “Raindropped.” What inspired you to write it?

“Raindropped” started as a question. Imagine you’re on an airplane with God. What do you ask?

I was so curious. I asked everyone I knew and got lots of insightful answers. But ultimately I decided on … nothing! I thought I’d be too afraid of knowing anything so huge and absolute. And so I wrote the scene: a man on an airplane with God.

Around the same time, two of my best friends graduated. They moved away, happily dating, to start a new life. And I was ecstatic for them but also torn up. Sure, we have phones and planes, but what happens when the people at our core accelerate away?

So what’s the play about?

The skinny is this: Elliot’s an exile, and trying to atone for a grave transgression. Now he’s best man at a destination wedding between two old friends, Liz and Beth.

But maybe he and Liz have history. And maybe he has a mysterious attraction to Liz’s sister. And maybe he’s running away from his dying brother, Charlie. And maybe, just maybe, the universe is doing everything in its power to help him stop messing up.

I want people to think about what they’re running from and where they’re running to. Is home your biological family? The family you make? Or is it something more spiritual? And how does where we’ve been haunt what we allow ourselves to believe?

Helen Fox performs. (Photo: Jerry Naunheim Jr./Washington University)

As a playwright, what do you learn from the workshopping process? How does it feel to hear your words aloud?

When I write, I hear the rhythms in my mind. But then other actors start reading it, and the rhythms can be so different. And that’s wonderful. You realize when the score is unclear, and when the actor is onto something better. It’s a living process.

Writing for the stage forces a kind of compression. You don’t have the same room for exposition that, say, a novel or serial television provides. How do you manage that challenge?

You have to straddle the line between artistic subtly and clarity. So many times, I’ve realized that something makes sense in my head — because I have all of the unwritten context — but confounds everyone else in the room!

As writers, we put so much of ourselves into things and then expect people to just understand. But it takes a lot more legwork. You have to make that translation from brain to page.

The festival continues at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23, with Danny Marshall’s “Desperate Times,” directed by Henry Schvey, professor of drama and of comparative literature, also in Arts & Sciences. The festival will conclude at 7 p.m. that evening with Greenberg’s “Raindropped,” directed by William Whitaker, professor of the practice in drama.

Sponsored by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, the festival is named for alumnus A.E. Hotchner, who famously bested Tennessee Williams in a campus playwriting competition. The festival is coordinated by Carter W. Lewis, playwright-in-residence. Guest dramaturg is Richard J. Roberts, resident dramaturg for the Indiana Repertory Theatre.

All readings are free and open to the public and take place in The A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre, located in Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. For more information, call 314-935-5858, visit pad.artsci.wustl.edu or follow on Facebook.

]]>https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/inside-hotchner-festival-scott-greenberg/feed/1Jazz at Holmes resumes Sept. 21https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/jazz-holmes-resumes-sept-21/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/jazz-holmes-resumes-sept-21/#respondWed, 20 Sep 2017 19:40:23 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=230956Legendary saxophonist Freddie Washington will launch Washington University in St. Louis' fall Jazz at Holmes series Thursday, Sept. 21. The series will include 10 performances by locally and nationally known musicians, including Italian guitarist Filippo Cosentino and the university's director of jazz performance, William Lenihan (pictured).

]]>Legendary saxophonist Freddie Washington, a leader on the St. Louis jazz scene since the 1960s, will help to kick-start Washington University in St. Louis’ fall Jazz at Holmes Series by performing a free concert of modern jazz from 8-10 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21, in Ridgley Hall’s Holmes Lounge.

In all, Jazz at Holmes will present 10 performances this fall by locally and nationally known musicians.

Washington began playing professionally in the mid-1950s, while still a student at Sumner High School. After a stint in the U.S. Navy, he returned home and became a popular mainstay of the Gaslight Square clubs in the 1960s. Over the years, he has performed with noted musicians such as Nat Adderley, Freddie Hubbard and Emily Remler. His recordings include the critically acclaimed “Lilac, Vol. 1” (1997). He is scheduled to appear Sept. 21 with his quartet, Modern Jazz.

Jazz at Holmes will continue Sept. 28 with drummer Montez Coleman and guitarist Eric Slaughter, followed Oct. 5 by singer Kim Fuller and her band.

Cosentino

Other highlights will include: Italian guitarist Filippo Cosentino performing “Music of Italian Film Composers” Oct. 19; singers Scott Bryan and Rick Schuler performing “Voices of Freedom, Songs of Social Justice” Nov. 2; and the Arc of Light Ensemble, an all-star group of St. Louis jazz musicians, Nov. 16.

Jazz at Holmes

Jazz at Holmes presents free campus concerts in a relaxed, coffeehouse setting most Thursday evenings throughout the year.

Jazz at Holmes is sponsored by Student Union, Congress of the South 40, Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, University College and Summer School, Campus Life, Danforth University Center and Event Management, Community Service Office, Office of Student Involvement and Leadership, Greek Life Office, Office of Residential Life, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Students and Office of the Provost.

Fall schedule

Sept. 21Saxophonist Freddie Washington

Sept. 28Drummer Montez Coleman and guitarist Eric Slaughter

Oct. 5Jazz singer Kim Fuller and her band

Oct. 19Guitarist Filippo Cosentino
With William Lenihan and the Sogni d’Alba string trio
“Music of Italian Film Composers”

]]>https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/jazz-holmes-resumes-sept-21/feed/0A singer’s operahttps://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/a-singers-opera/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/a-singers-opera/#respondTue, 19 Sep 2017 12:11:24 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=230455In “Borgia Infami,” St. Louis composer Harold Blumenfeld (1923-2014) combines historical fact and dramatic legend to investigate the nature of power and how secrets echo across the generations. On Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, Winter Opera Saint Louis and the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will present the world premiere of Blumenfeld’s two-act opera in Edison Theatre at Washington University in St. Louis.

Steps away, and five centuries later, a tour guide regales visitors with tales of the infamous Borgia clan. Rodrigo, the family patriarch, boasts of their strength. Eldest son Cesare, ensconced within the College of Cardinals, longs for an army. Daughter Lucrezia, alleged poisoner of the family’s enemies, steps free from a painting and into a life of murder and betrayal.

In “Borgia Infami,” St. Louis composer Harold Blumenfeld (1923-2014) combines historical fact and dramatic legend to investigate the nature of power and how secrets echo across the generations.

Written for nine lead singers, choruses and orchestra, “Borgia Infami” depicts the lives, loves and crimes of the brilliant yet corrupt Borgias, perhaps the most notorious family of the Italian Renaissance.

The story opens in 1492 with Rodrigo’s coronation as Pope Alexander VI. But the narrative also jumps forward and backward in time. The Vatican tour guide is magically transformed into Narciso, a poor officer of noble birth who falls under Lucrezia’s spell. Rodrigo feuds with the pious monk Savonarola. Cesare flies to the battlefield, his ruthless trajectory immortalized in the writings of Machiavelli.

Blumenfeld, a professor emeritus of music in Arts & Sciences, who taught at Washington University for nearly 40 years, began “Borgia Infami” in 1998, while in residence at the Bogliasco Foundation’s Centro Studi Ligure, near Genoa, Italy. The opera is based primarily on two sources: “The Incredible Borgias” (1928) by German novelist Klabund (aka Alfred Henschke) and Victor Hugo’s “Lucrèce Borgia” (1833). In 2003, the New York City Opera performed excerpts as part of its annual VOX showcase.

“Borgia Infami is a singers’ opera,” Blumenfeld said at the time. “Arias emerge, duets, trios, a sextet. There are scenes of violence and mayhem … scenes of impassioned filial love … street urchins and irreverent comic relief … and moments of transparent, wistful simplicity.

“In the opening score, a vast fresco of the coronation of Rodrigo Borgia as Pope comes alive, and the opera is launched.”

Cast & Crew

Scott Schoonover

“Borgia Infami” was Blumenfeld’s final collaboration with librettist Charles Kondek. The pair also worked together on the farcical ensemble opera “Fourscore: An Opera of Opposites” (1986), the opera-bagatelle “Breakfast Waltzes” (1991), and the full-length “Seasons in Hell” (1996), based on the life of poet Arthur Rimbaud.

The cast is led by baritone Jacob Lassetter as Rodrigo, mezzo-soprano Lindsey Anderson as Lucrezia and bass Andrew Potter as Cesare. Tenors John Kaneklides and Anthony Heinemann play Narcisio and Savonarola.

Nacisio’s friends — Andrea, Ascanio, Jeppo, Oloferno — are played by Zachary Devin, Joel Rogier, Jason Mallory and Robert McNichols, Jr., respectively. Rounding out the cast are Karen Kanakis, Leann Schuering and Victoria Menke as a trio of tourists.

“Borgia Infami” begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30; and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1. Performances take place in Edison Theatre, located in Mallinckrodt Center, 6465 Forsyth Blvd. Tickets are $25, or $20 for seniors and Washington University faculty and staff; $10 for students and children; and free for Washington University students.

]]>https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/a-singers-opera/feed/0Metabolomics just got smallerhttps://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/metabolomics-just-got-smaller/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/metabolomics-just-got-smaller/#respondMon, 18 Sep 2017 13:15:50 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=225200Scientists at Washington University estimate that the number of metabolites present in a data set could be 90 percent smaller than previously estimated.

]]>Not long ago, scientists placed wagers on the number of genes in the human genome. Some bets ranged upward of 100,000 genes being present. Once the human genome sequence was completed, a project led in part by the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, even the lowest guess of 25,947 proved to be above the true number.

Now, nearly 15 years later, scientists at Washington University are seeing a reminiscent trend in the newest type of big data known as metabolomics. They estimate that the number of metabolites present in a data set could be 90 percent smaller than previously estimated.

Like its genomic predecessor, metabolomics seeks to profile all of the metabolites present in a sample. Unlike genes, however, metabolites are not made from common building blocks and are much more chemically diverse. Familiar metabolites include molecules such as glucose and cholesterol, many of which are a product of diet. Thus, trying to pin down the exact number of metabolites in humans has been a tough challenge. Because of its strong nutritional dependence, some scientists have argued that it’s not even the relevant question to be asking.

There has been interest in measuring metabolites for nearly as long as there has been interest in human health. Analysis of glucose in diabetes probably dates back centuries. Handfuls of other metabolites have been used to diagnose diseases broadly referred to as “inborn errors of metabolism” since the 1960s. Metabolomics tries to measure all of these metabolites, and more. The question is: How many more are there?

The scene for metabolomics was set with the advent of sophisticated devices called mass spectrometers. These instruments are like tiny scales that can measure the weights of molecules, such as sugars. By using databases and computational algorithms, scientists can convert measured weights into compound names, like glucose.

A decade ago, when metabolomics started to become mainstream, scientists were surprised to discover that the number of signals in a typical metabolomics experiment greatly exceeds the number of known metabolites in biochemistry textbooks. Said Gary Patti, associate professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences and senior author of the study: “Of course, the knee-jerk reaction is to assume that most of the signals that do not return matches in databases correspond to unknown metabolites that have never been reported before.”

The implications of such an assumption are major: tens of thousands of metabolites remain to be discovered, an order of magnitude more than what is included on your common wall chart of comprehensive metabolism (see image below).

Metabolism is complicated. The good news is that it might not be as complicated as previously thought. New research from scientists at Washington University supports a picture more like the one on the right. (Image: Gary Patti lab)

“It is routine to detect tens of thousands of signals in metabolomics, but only 1,000 to 2,000 have been identified in any experiment to date,” said Nathaniel Mahieu, a postdoctoral fellow in Patti’s lab, who led the study.

Said Patti: “The million dollar question is: How many metabolites do all of these metabolomic signals actually correspond to?”

Mahieu and Patti, who was announced last week as an awardee of an eight-year, $5.85 million inaugural grant in environmental health from the National Institutes of Health, developed new experimental and computational approaches to interrogate metabolomics data sets. They arrived at a striking conclusion. They found that the actual number of metabolites in a typical metabolomics analysis may be one-tenth as large as previously suggested, with much of the data coming from “noise.” Thousands of signals arise from contamination, artifacts, and something called “degeneracy” — say, when one metabolite shows up as many different signals. The research team found that some metabolites show up as more than 150 signals.

“It turns out that more than 90 percent of the signals we see in E. coli data are essentially noise,” Mahieu said. “This greatly reduces the number of unknown metabolites that we thought we were detecting.”

“I think this is sort of a wake-up call, a reality check if you will, on what metabolomics suggests about the size of the metabolome,” Patti said. “I believe it is a good thing. It means we’re a lot closer to understanding metabolism than we probably thought we were.”

Postdoctoral fellow Nathaniel Mahieu (left) and Gary Patti, a recent recipient of an eight-year NIH grant, developed approaches revealing that only one-tenth of the signals in a metabolomics experiment correspond to unique metabolites. (Photo: James Byard/Washington University)

As for the next step, Patti’s lab intends to extend their techniques to human samples.

“The ultimate goal is to do analogous experiments for humans,” Patti said. “Our work here is an important step forward.”

So what do all of these noise signals mean to other scientists performing metabolomics? The Patti lab has started curating what they term “reference data sets” in a database called creDBle (creDBle.wustl.edu). They hope that it will facilitate experiments for other scientists performing metabolomics.

“The way metabolomics is currently performed is terribly inefficient. We waste a lot of time trying to interpret signals that provide minimal biological insight,” Mahieu said. “We hope that these reference data sets in creDBle will help prevent scientists from having to identify the same noise signals over and over again now that we have annotated them.”

Funding came via the National Institutes of Health grants R01 ES022181 and R21 CA191097, as well as the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences.

]]>https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/metabolomics-just-got-smaller/feed/0Patti rolling on RIVER granthttps://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/patti-rolling-river-grant/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/patti-rolling-river-grant/#respondFri, 15 Sep 2017 14:15:04 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=229289The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded an eight-year, $5.85 million grant to Gary Patti, associate professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, for research.

]]>The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded an eight-year, $5.85 million grant to Gary Patti, associate professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, for research.

The award is part of the inaugural Revolutionizing Innovative, Visionary Environmental health Research program (RIVER). Starting this academic year, it is being given to a select handful of U.S. scientists in varying career stages for work in environmental health. The RIVER design: to fund scientists with transformative visions and track records for impactful and innovative research contributions.

Patti intends to use the grant to delve deeper into the study of metabolites — a pursuit known as metabolomics. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the division of the NIH issuing the RIVER award, was among the first to support metabolomics. As early as 2004, just a few years after the term “metabolomics” was first coined, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences announced plans to provide funding to advance metabolomics for environmental health.

Scientists in environmental health are interested in applying metabolomics to human samples such as serum, which is a component of blood. Their goal is not only to measure molecules made naturally inside the body, but also to find substances that originate from exposure to dangerous chemicals throughout a lifetime. Increasing evidence suggests that such chemical exposures play a much larger role in causing disease than once thought.

It is the environment, in many cases, that sets off our “bad genes,” scientists are learning. In other words, the chemicals we eat, breathe, and touch might be at the root of many health problems. The questions are: Which chemicals, and how?

“We can detect thousands of signals from a metabolomic analysis of human serum,” Patti said. “The challenge is that a major fraction of the signals cannot be identified with our current libraries.”

This has left researchers scratching their heads. One popular interpretation is that lots of these unidentifiable signals arise from chemical exposures. Patti has a different perspective: “With new experimental approaches, we’ve learned that thousands of signals in some metabolomic data sets come from experimental contaminants and artifacts,” he said. “This greatly enhances our resolution to find unknown exposure chemicals, which may correlate to far fewer signals than what has been predicted.”

Patti is hopeful that new metabolomic approaches also will help to provide insight into why certain chemicals are toxic. “There are tens of thousands of chemicals in widespread commercial use,” Patti said. “The effects of most of these compounds on human health are completely unknown. We intend to develop and apply new metabolomic technologies that will allow us both to screen chemicals for potentially hazardous effects, and also to better understand exactly how these chemicals are toxic.”

]]>https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/patti-rolling-river-grant/feed/0Tomb of early classic Maya ruler found in Guatemalahttps://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/tomb-early-classic-maya-ruler-found-guatemala/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/tomb-early-classic-maya-ruler-found-guatemala/#commentsWed, 13 Sep 2017 20:19:42 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=228221The tomb of a Maya ruler excavated this summer at the Classic Maya city of Waka in northern Guatemala is the oldest royal tomb yet to be discovered at the site, the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala has announced.

]]>The tomb of a Maya ruler excavated this summer at the Classic Maya city of Waka’ in northern Guatemala is the oldest royal tomb yet to be discovered at the site, the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala has announced.
Freidel

“The Classic Maya revered their divine rulers and treated them as living souls after death,” said research co-director David Freidel, professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

“This king’s tomb helped to make the royal palace acropolis holy ground, a place of majesty, early in the history of the Wak — centipede — dynasty. It’s like the ancient Saxon kings England buried in Old Minster, the original church underneath Winchester Cathedral.”

The tomb, discovered by Guatemalan archaeologists of the U.S.-Guatemalan El Perú-Waka’ Archaeological Project (Proyecto Arqueológico Waka’, or PAW), has been provisionally dated by ceramic analysis to 300-350 A.D., making it the earliest known royal tomb in the northwestern Petén region of Guatemala.

Previous research at the site has revealed six royal tombs and sacrificial offering burials dating to the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries A.D.

El Perú-Waka’ is about 40 miles west of the famous Maya site of Tikal near the San Pedro Martir River in Laguna del Tigre National Park. In the Classic period, this royal city commanded major trade routes running north to south and east to west.

Map of the Maya world courtesy of Keith Eppich (click to enlarge).

The findings, first disclosed at a Guatemalan symposium sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, suggest the new tomb, known as “Burial 80,” dates from the early years of the Wak (centipede in Mayan) royal dynasty.

One of the earliest known Maya dynasties, the Wak is thought to have been established in the second century A.D. based on calculations from a later historical text at the site.

Although the ruler in Burial 80, identified as a mature man, was not accompanied by inscribed artifacts and is therefore anonymous, he is possibly King Te’ Chan Ahk, a historically known Wak king who was ruling in the early fourth century A.D., the research team suggests.

Freidel has directed research at this site in collaboration with Guatemalan and foreign archaeologists since 2003.

Anthropologists Juan Carlos Pérez Calderon of San Carlos University in Guatemala and Damien Marken of Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania are project co-directors. Olivia Navarro-Farr, assistant professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio, is co-principal investigator and long-term supervisor of the site.

Jade mask from Burial 80, painted red with cinnabar paint. (Image: Courtesy of Proyecto Arqueológico Waka’ and the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala)

Calderon and Guatemalan archaeologists Griselda Pérez Robles and Damaris Menéndez supervised tunnel excavations inside the Palace Acropolis that led to the new tomb.

Identification of the tomb as royal is based on the presence of a jade portrait mask depicting the ruler with the forehead hair tab of the Maize God. Maya kings were regularly portrayed as Maize God impersonators. This forehead tab has a unique “Greek Cross” symbol which means “Yellow” and “Precious” in ancient Mayan. This symbol is also associated with the Maize God.

Robles and Menéndez discovered the mask under the head of the ruler, and it may have been made to cover the face rather than as a chest pectoral. Archaeologists at Tikal in the 1960s discovered a similar greenstone mask in the earliest Maya royal tomb, dating to the first century A.D.

Additional offerings in Burial 80 included 22 ceramic vessels, Spondylus shells, jade ornaments and a shell pendant carved as a crocodile. The remains of the ruler and some ornaments like the portrait mask were painted bright red. Burial 80 was reverentially reentered after 600 A.D. at least once, and it is possible that the bones were painted during this reentry.

Burial 80 during excavation shows stone cup in the center surrounded by bones. (Image: Courtesy of Proyecto Arqueológico Waka’ and the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala)

The research leading to the discovery of Burial 80 was supported by: the Hitz Foundation through co-director Freidel and Washington University; the Alphawood Foundation through Navarro-Farr and Wooster; and by the GeoOntological Society through Marken and Bloomsburg.

The project carries out research under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala and its Directorate for Cultural and Natural Patrimony, the Council for Protected Areas, and it is sponsored by the Foundation for the Cultural and Natural Patrimony (PACUNAM) and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

]]>https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/tomb-early-classic-maya-ruler-found-guatemala/feed/3Wiens, Shore to study seismic activity on Alaskan coasthttps://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/wiens-shore-study-seismic-activity-alaskan-coast/
https://source.wustl.edu/2017/09/wiens-shore-study-seismic-activity-alaskan-coast/#respondTue, 12 Sep 2017 19:23:17 +0000https://source.wustl.edu/?p=228575Douglas Wiens, the Robert S. Brookings Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Patrick Shore, staff scientist and lecturer in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, will collaborate with eight other institutions on a $4.5 million National Science Foundation study of a volatile volcano and earthquake zone on the sea floor off the Alaskan Peninsula.

]]>Douglas Wiens, the Robert S. Brookings Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Patrick Shore, staff scientist and lecturer in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, will collaborate with eight other institutions on a $4.5 million National Science Foundation study of a volatile volcano and earthquake zone on the sea floor off the Alaskan Peninsula.
Wiens

Wiens, who has worked on similar seismic studies near the Mariana trench and in Antarctica, said these Alaskan experiments will monitor signals from earthquakes to learn more about what triggers volcanoes in the area and how magma movement beneath the earth’s crust contributes to the region’s intensive geologic activity.

A mystifying fact that geologists aim to try to answer: Why one particular stretch hasn’t recorded a major earthquake for decades — when every other part of that area has.

Led by Cornell University, the research project will involve scientists from eight universities, along with support from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Scientists have been attracted to the region because of the subduction zone located at the bottom of the ocean where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates collide, the Aleutian Trench. Ninety percent of all U.S. earthquakes can be traced to that trench, the only location in North America to record magnitude 8 and 9 earthquakes. Most of the continent’s known volcanic eruptions have occurred along this subduction zone as well.

Shore

Recent improvements to seismometer technology and reliability will allow the research team to make detailed observations of the geologically active region for the first time, including more advanced monitoring of activity at the ocean bottom.

The experiments will use 105 high-end seismometers across a 435-mile-long stretch of the peninsula’s coast. They will entail ocean-bottom seismometers deployed as far off shore as 300 miles and broadband seismic equipment buried across various islands.

“We will also have some stations on Kodiak Island, so we are trying to figure out how to keep the bears from destroying them,” Wiens said.

Others involved in the project include: Colgate University; the U.S. Geological Survey; the University of Washington; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the University of Colorado; Columbia University; and the University of New Mexico. Ocean-bottom seismometers are provided by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.